I moved into my house 1 yr ago and want to plant a hedge along the front perimeter of my garden which is currently just lawn and a driveway.

Original deeds of house date back to 1964 and say the following:
"The This schedule (restrictions and stipulations imposed by the vendor"
1 No fence wall hedge or other physical division shall at any time be erected or grown in the forecourt of any plot nor shall any commercial vehicle or parked or allowed to stand thereon and for the purpose to these stipulations the forecourt of each plot shall be that part which lies in front of any dwelling house erected on the plot and shall extend to the whole with of the plot between such dwelling house and the estate road upon this the plots abut and in the case of corner plots shall induce so much of such plots as lies between the fence line approved by or agreed with the local authority and the flank road on which such corner plot abut"

When I purchased the property I received a copy of register of title from my solicitor which contained a schedule or restrictive covenants but there is no mention of the above restriction.

So my first question is - has the restriction in the original deeds expired in some way that there is no record of it officially anymore at the land registry and therefore no restrictions?

Second question regarding the hedge that I want to grow. 100% of the houses in the estate have some kind of hedge so if this was enforced to the letter then we are all currently breaking the covenant. I wish to plant a continuous hedge that would only be broken up by the entrance and exit to my driveway so it would effectively be 3 separate hedges. There are a few other houses who have done this but their front gardens are smaller so I think they have gone unnoticed. Mine will be noticed by everybody on the estate within 24hours of being planted.

I understand that this is only enforceable by the original developer who doesn't exist anymore so if I did proceed and plant a nice, low hedge along the perimeter of my border, could a neighbour have a case against me or could the council get involved and force me to take it out?

Covenants are expensive and often difficult to enforce. When there has been widespread contravention of the covenants on a development, enforcement is even more difficult. In order to enforce a covenant, a complainant only has a chance of winning if they have the right to enforce the covenant, they have not contravened any covenants themselves and the development character has not been changed by widespread contravention of covenants. Even if all these criteria can be met, they then have to show how their property has been adversely affected by the contravention they are complaining about and financial damages......so you can see why it is highly unlikely that anyone will get through all these hoops and get anything worthwhile at the end of it.

So if you want to take a chance, put in the hedge and see what happens.